Dmitry Yemanov wrote:

>
> I don't have problems with either approach. I just want us to choose one and
> make our future metadata extentions consistent.
>

I suggest keeping numeric types and adding a parallel _SOURCE field that
contains the textual version of the numeric type - as below where the
lower case letters are new fields.

define relation rdb$pages (
RDB$PAGE_NUMBER INTEGER Nullable,
RDB$RELATION_ID SMALLINT Nullable,
rdb$relation_name varchar(128),
RDB$PAGE_SEQUENCE INTEGER Nullable,
RDB$PAGE_TYPE SMALLINT Nullable,
rdb$page_type_source varchar (128) check value in
('HEADER', 'PAGE INVENTORY', 'TRANSACTION INVENTORY',
'POINTER', 'DATA', 'INDEX ROOT', 'INDEX', 'BLOB',
'GENERATOR', 'LOG'));


Regards,


Ann